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Whole-house Video

Imagine… A Fully-integrated Whole-house Video Distribution System

Want to watch HDTV or Satellite TV in every room in your home? Want to see a list of CDs, MP3s or DVDs on the TV or touchscreen in the bedroom and be able to play them? A video distribution system can make it happen.

There are many options, and we can design a system that meets your needs. Call or email us today for a free quote! Read on for more details on the different options:

Whole house Video distribution systems traditionally have been systems that distribute your cable TV or roof-top antenna to TV sets in different parts of your house. We use RG-6 quad shielded coax cable in our installations, since it is the highest quality cable, and it has the best noise rejection capabilities. Running 1 or 2 Cat5e cables will allow for many options in the future. This allows flexibility and expansion to be built into the system. But today, video distribution systems are capable of distributing other video sources (Security cameras, Satellite, VCR, DVD, Blu-ray or HDTV) to some or all rooms in your home. There are several ways to distribute video:

Analog Modulators—A modulator is a device that takes low-level video, and modulates it on to a channel that can be viewed on any TV in your home. This device can modulate it on to any unused channel… Channel 35… Channel 52… Channel Plus makes modulators that can modulate 1 or more devices onto any channel that you want. You simply connect the audio and video outputs of your VCR or surveillance cameras to this device, and connect it's output to the cable system. So, lets say your cable company has stations on channels 2 through 48. Using modulators, you could put the VCR on channel 50, the Video security camera on channel 52, and the DVD player on channel 54! Since this method of video distribution runs over the main coax cable plant already installed in your home, the only cost associated with it is the cost for the modulators themselves. Because of the change to Digital TV (DTV), analog modulators don't make much sense anymore.

HDTV Modulators--There now are digital modulators that have higher quality audio and video options. They will take in HDMI or Component video and audio and modulate on to an unused channel like 10-1. There are models that support 720p and 1080p. The down side is that all of the TVs in your house must have a digital tuner to see the video and these devices can be rather expensive.

Composite Video—Composite video can be distributed over CAT5e/6 cables or Coaxial cable. But with the DTV transition, it is not done much anymore as most people want to view higher quality video like Component or HDMI.

Higher Quality Video Distribution—Composite video is fine for some applications like security cameras, but what if you want to distribute high quality video from a central DVD, Blu-ray player or HDTV receiver, Component or HDMI Video Distribution is what you want. There are many companies that make products that will distribute high quality video and digital audio over a Cat5 or higher cable or Coax. It is a 2-part system, the transmitter part would go next to the DVD or Blu-ray player, and the receiver would go near the TVs that you want to view the DVD player on. So the DVD player will connect to the transmitter via Component or HDMI Video connections, and a Coax or Fiber Optics cable for the digital audio connection. The TV would connect to the receiver using the same connections. There are also large switching devices that can switch multiple HDTV inputs to multiple HDTV outputs, and these devices are coming down in price.

Satellite TV Distribution—Satellite TV can be distributed throughout the house in several ways. The easiest way would be to put a separate satellite receiver in every room that has a TV. Then you would use a device called a Multiswitch that takes an input from the satellite dish, and splits it into 4, 8 or more satellite receiver outputs. The other option is to put a receiver or receivers in a central location and distribute the audio/video using one of the above methods (Modulator, Low-Level Distribution, Component or HDMI distribution).

HDTV Distribution—HDTV distribution can be done in several ways. It really depends on how you are receiving the HDTV signals. If you have an Antenna that receives local broadcast HDTV signals and TVs in your home that can receive these signals (so they have built in HDTV or digital tuners) then it is very easy to do. All you need is Coax cabling to all of your TV locations, and a good antenna installed on your roof or in your attic. If you get your HDTV content from a Satellite TV or Cable TV provider, then you can use the same cabling as long as you put a Satellite or Cable TV box at each TV location. You could also just put one or more Satellite or Cable TV boxs in a central location and distribute the HDTV content throughout the house using a Video distribution system (see Component or HDMI Distribution above).

Distribution Amplifiers—Distribution amplifiers come in many different forms, but all do basically the same thing. It doesn't matter if you are distributing Composite, Component, Digital, Cable TV or Satellite video to multiple TV locations, there are amplifiers that will make sure that the video looks good on all TVs in your home.

Video Switching—Want to be able to take multiple video sources (DVDs, Blu-ray, Satellite Receivers, Security Cameras) and select which TVs in the system view them? Video switching allows you to control where the video is displayed. Let's say that you have 10 TVs in 10 different rooms and 4 video devices (Satellite receivers, Blu-ray or DVD player, VCR, etc.). By using video switching, you could be watching Satellite in some rooms, a DVD in others, and the VCR in the rest. There are many options here, but some video switchers only support the same types of video (composite to composite or component to component) and some will up-convert all types of video to VGA or some high resolution image. So you could connect composite, component, and VGA devices in to the system and see them all on a computer monitor or flat screen TV. Up-converting devices typically cost more money.